Benjamin Drummond, a 24-year-old Black sailor, was the first patient
admitted to the Naval Hospital, Washington City (now known as the Old Naval
Hospital) when it opened on October 1, 1866. Drummond's admitting ticket noted that he was suffering
from a wound received during a battle off the coast of Texas when his ship
was captured,

Drummond, stood 5'4" tall and (in
1877) weighed 127 lbs. He was born about 1843 in Nasau, New York, and was employed as a
mariner before enlisting in the Navy
on November 4, 1861.

During his first enlistment Drummond served aboard three ships before being assigned to the
USS Morning Light on March 20, 1862. The ship was assigned to blockade duty
in the Gulf of Mexico off of Sabine Pass, near the border with Louisiana. At
6:30 AM on the morning of January 21, 1863, the Rebel's launched an attack
with two cutters called "cotton clads" for the bales of cotton piled around
the sides as makeshift armor.

Reports of the
engagement showed that although the sail-powered Morning Light was
heavily armed, she suffered a great disadvantage against the steam-powered
cutters because there was almost no wind that morning. By 10 AM the
Confederate vessels had closed to artillery range and managed to hit the
Morning Light with a number of shells, doing considerable damage.

By 11 AM they were within small arms range, and a detachment of soldiers
from the Texas Mounted Rifles aboard the cutters opened a withering fire.
According to a Rebel reporter, Union sailors "fell from the masts like
squirrels from a tree." Benjamin Drummond was one of those sailors. In later
years he stated that he was in the masts when shot in the shoulder, and after
falling to the deck was shot in both legs. The report of casualties
prepared by the ships surgeon mentioned Drummond.

Another Confederate report of the engagement stated that 109 Union sailors
were captured, and that "Among the latter are 29 Negroes, including one
severely wounded." We know that he was referring to Benjamin Drummond because
the Union report of casualties lists him as the only Black Union sailor who
was severely wounded in the engagement. Most of the crew was imprisoned for
at least 18 months, but Benjamin Drummond somehow managed to escape after
just seven months.

On August 19, 1863, the logbook
of the gunboat USS Katahdin recorded that
"At 5 a boat containing seven Negroes escaped from Galveston came alongside."
The logbook named Drummond as one of the former crewmembers of the "U.S.S.
Morning Light, captured and burned some months since." That same day he was
transferred to the USS Tennessee, which
recorded his arrival in the logbook
before sailing to New Orleans where he was admitted into the naval hospital.

Drummond reenlisted on December 6, 1864, and served on a number of ships, principally
the USS Squando, a new monitor that was patrolling Charleston harbor, South
Carolina. Duty aboard monitors was hard, especially in a hot climate. The
Squando was powered by two coal-fired steam engines, and even if he was not
shoveling coal, they were inside the metal hull, and this was an age before
air conditioning.

Not surprisingly, his wound reopened and Drummond was set ashore and admitted as the very first patient to what
was then called the Naval Hospital, Washington City. His record of treatment paints a sympathetic
portrait of a sailor who suffered as his wound refused to heal. On March 23,
1868, Drummond was discharged from the Navy
and the Hospital because his term of enlistment had expired.

It appears that as the years passed Drummond may have told a bolder tale
of his part in the battle when the USS Morning Light was captured, because in
1873, in both a Declaration for
Increase Pension and a Surgeon's
Certificate from an examination in 1873 recorded that he was "Wounded in
the right arm just below the shoulder joint..." In response, Thomas J.
Turner, a medical inspector, wrote a letter to the Surgeon General
stating, in part, that while the records relating to Drummond show that
during the battle he was shot in the leg "No mention is made in any part of
the record of a gun-shot wound of the right shoulder."

He was examined again in 1875 and in
1877. Additional information can be
gleaned from Invalid Certificate 1719, which
appears to track some of the events during the life of his pension. In 1879
he wrote a letter wrote a letter in his own
hand requesting payment of money due under an act granting arrears of
pensions approved by Congress on January 25, 1879. On June 5, 1879, payment of $210.13 was approved by a
pension examiner.

On March 11, 1881, he died from Bights Disease, a failure of the kidney.
Even with the extra money from his pension, life must have been difficult,
for his death certificate notes that he
was buried by charity.

In 1860 he had married a Laura Berkely in Richmond, Virginia, and
following his death she applied for a widows
pension of eight dollars a month, with an additional two dollars for
their son, Benjamin W. Drummond, born May 14, 1876. Laura Drummond was
illiterate, and paid an attorney ten dollars to process the paperwork. The
entries in a form, Cert. No. 6854, show
that the pension examiner required information about her marriage and child.
Some of the actions taken in the processing of her benefits were recorded in
a "Widow's Case" form.